Alibaba chief`s `romance and marriage`

"Too close, you are burned to death. Too far, you get frozen to death." This is an epigram frequently cited in stressing the ideal distance between government and business. A country where entrepreneurs have difficulties doing business without bribing government officials is far from being an advanced nation. Government officials who avoid meeting business people and come up with policies irrelevant to real economy may be free from corruption but hampers economic growth and job creation.

Jack Ma, founder and chairman of China`s e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, attracts global attention in every word he says and every move he makes. He is close to Chinese President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Li Keqiang and has frequent conversations with them. However, he does not offer bribes to government officials in return for favors or government support. Mawin often says, "Be in love with the government, but don`t marry them." In a speech to the Davos forum in January, he said that marriage is "bondage," stressing that too much dependence on the government would put a company under government control.

Ma met his wife Zhang Ying in college and married her as soon as he graduated. Zhang said she was attracted to Ma for his sincere attitude and enthusiasm for whatever he was doing. She worked as her husband`s business partner, taking charge of Alibaba`s China operations when the company was started in 1999, before quitting the job to become a full-time housewife to take care of their son. It may be that Ma`s friction with his wife over child rearing and education affected his viewpoint of romance and marriage.

While Korea has its own share of government corruption, the scale of corruption in China`s officialdom is beyond our imagination. Domestic and overseas economic experts say that the instability in the Chinese economy was in part resulted from Xi`s war on corruption, which turned many government officials to become passive. The Communist Party of China`s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, an anti-corruption agency, issued a statement on Tuesday that the future is "bright" for business people like Jack Ma, who does not offer bribes to government officials. Underlying the statement is, perhaps, Beijing`s intention to promote the legitimacy of its anti-corruption drive through Ma, who has emerged as a global business star, and re-establish the business-bureaucracy relationship.